discrepancy
by xoVanilla-Bean
Summary: Of walls and handcuffs and some literal form of poetry, Seifer could only wish this had something to do with sex. Oh, but wasn't his crotch missing? Can't forget about that. — Seifer, Quistis — PostGame


I don't like this one. I think I'm going to clean it up, someday. Make it readable. The pacing's bad. The development not even...Bldkasieaij. This is my caution tape right here, you guys.

_Discrepancy _.. .

* * *

One day, Seifer woke up.

In a metaphorical sense, it would be easier to state where he was. Unfortunately, due to the hatred the world, Hyne, and possibly everyone else in his universe held for him in a terrifyingly _daunting_ plethora of emotion, even he knew that this couldn't honestly be…Hell. It would be far worse for him, all things considered. Or, at least, he thought it should be worse for him. Who was the deity kidding? Maybe he was secretly the sanest person the world had, and all the saviors had been senile crocks—now _that_ would be the greatest ironic bitch of them all.

So…literally? He had no fucking clue where he landed.

He stood up slowly, hunching like an eighty year old, feeling the knobs of his spine make rusty, questionable creaking noises. His quads felt like dried leaves, and walking was a beautiful, impossible dream. His shoulders resembled split pistachio shells, and his ass…well, he would have someone's ass for making his as painful as _this._

Whoever killed him—or _tried_ to kill him—did a pretty shitty job.

He sighed and squinted at the harsh lighting. He had no idea where it was coming from, as the overhead pallet was an opaque, ivory dome. There were no clouds, no sun, and definitely no birds or Gardens littering the space. It was free, liberated, and it seemed to easily stretch for miles and miles and miles, as wide as it must have been in length. It flaunted its endless ideality and its pristine innocence. Seifer automatically felt jealous.

In a weird play on design, the ground was lovingly embracing sediment and sand, some places a light tan and others a rich dark brown. Those were few and far in between, and Seifer had an instinctual feeling that he should avoid those rare, enchanting, ugly specks of soil.

He vaguely wondered who had been in charge of the landscaping. If he had been given the job of decorating this place, he knew there would be at least be _one _tree.

But what the hell did he know? The dirt was the only slightest interesting thing in the barren fallout, and there wouldn't be anything else to do in this godforsaken—

He started to turn around, but his wobbly knees, unfaithful as they were, pitched him forward and onto some rickety stabilizer. He dislodged his face with weak arms—the pain in his shoulders was a moaning _whore_—and came into a staring contest with a fence.

The fence, he blinked – subconsciously losing – was high. It was perhaps as high as the white thing above him. There was no way to tell. But the grand height of it was about to give him a roaring nosebleed and, becoming dizzy from all the small diamond patterns, Seifer had to look away in distaste. And confusion.

Thinking he was completely disorientated by the aimless fence, there was nothing to describe his feelings at what lay beyond it.

In the distance, far from his reach, he saw the inner workings of Balamb Garden. Some were fluttering faces, whizzing past in utter haste—as if they had cast Haste—and others in the midst, walking in slow motion, moving in slow motion. Others were normal, but the others, he found, he only had acknowledged a few times in his memory. They were very hard to grasp, his memories, but once he saw the people he barely knew, barely even gave a passing glance to, it was as if they raced into his mind and viciously scavenged their names to his lips.

"Roilben." The nerd, the Treppie. He had pushed him into lockers once upon a time. Through the uncomfortable tugging sensations, Seifer laughed. That guy needed help in more than just the looks department.

"Keira." Another one. A girl he had screwed after him and Raijin got incredibly plastered. He couldn't even remember it, but it seemed she did enough for the both of them. His cheek burned with the tingle of a slap, and he felt tears pitter-patter on his chest. The hopeless sense of betrayal provoked inside him, he found, must have been her own. Because if he had felt this way at the time, he didn't know himself more than he thought. But if he couldn't remember any detail about sex, **i**t must have been a fucking disaster.

"Larron." A bastard. A sneering, cocky son of a bitch. And even Seifer knew the resemblance of how that sounded. But he had always picked a fight at the worst times.

And they kept coming. How many of them _were_ there? One, after the other after the other, again and again and again. It felt as if he was shooting for the ceiling, and it just wasn't reachable. It wasn't ever going to meet him, and his body would never slam into it. He was very aware of this. And, regardless, it was draining the shit out of him.

But it did come to an end, eventually. An end after half the world was shown through his conscious, after he had breathed in countless emotions he swore he never took the time to feel. His neck snapped back at the force of the last person, or more correctly, a little boy, at the tip of his gunblade, standing and ripping into an explosion of red skin. Seifer felt that boy's flesh stew inside his stomach, and he blinked with heavy recognition.

It was a claw, an inward scrape, and the blood was filling his throat and his lungs and his mouth and –

Seifer threw up excuses.

And then he passed out.

"Fuckin_g Hyne_."

He didn't care if swearing the god's name would be the death of him yet. It felt like he died and then was resuscitated with swords anyway, so who cared?

He was able to push himself up to a sitting position, but anything more had him flopping like a fish. It looked like he was becoming a paraplegic by the second. Wonderful.

He also noticed, with mild horror and strange fascination, that his abdomen was blown to shreds. There was a hole inside him now, and either he had a bottomless supply of blood or he was gonna bleed out soon. Whichever would come out of this, he could only grasp at straws.

But this was able to answer one question. He was unbelievably _starving._

He poked at the tender area surrounding the red pit, but he wasn't able to touch it. It wasn't really _real _anyway.

But the sensation of bile in his chest was. The shitless fear it would be another organ kept it down.

He was gonna amend that one statement from before. He probably wasn't the sanest man in the world, if he cared to think about it.

But...he had to take his mind off this. He searched the area, trying to find something slightly pleasant. He wouldn't have cared if it was a flower, or some pitiful butterfly trying to find that flower, but – there was only one thing.

It was the visions beyond the fence again.

Was this some twisted form of atonement? Well. Probably. But it didn't make him feel any better about reaching for the metal diamonds a second time.

Everything was the same as the first. The others were still in their regular movements, the ones in slow motion were enticing in their carefree activities, and the ones overdosing on Haste were spastic and glittering and .. were now jolting his mind in a fit of electro-shock.

His upper body staggered, and he reached out a hand to give a futile attempt to stop his fall. It was futile, in this case, because the ground had decided to disappear.

_Thanks, ground. What perfect timing. Can you teach me this, in the future?_

In the space of time, he watched the fence fall away, and he watched the sand drip in a waterfall, like an hourglass. The time it was taking for the sand to follow was unnaturally fast, and he matched this up with the Haste addiction.

In this version, though, there were no faces yelling, screaming, or crying. There weren't any name-calling, bouts of infinite emotion, or millions of veins of running mascara.

There were, however, flashes. Flashes of insanity, flashes of horses and castles with a fairytale gloating past, flashes of the world in ruins.

There were flashes of him smiling, happy, holding something that took all the pain away.

There were flashes of him, carrying a golden outline, with his Sorceress behind him, on top of fire and little boys that were dead and the whole wide universe.

He felt the power course through him, and his heart shriveling into his detonation button. And it was his decision to make – only it wouldn't be under his own state of mind. Wasn't it Edea's choice? Ultimecia? She would help him. He would do it for her.

Three…and then two…one…

And his eyes were-are-forever snakes, rattling a misty blue-green, orbiting a dilating black hole.

"You and I could have had this."

He raised his head and he saw gold and blood. A trophy everlasting.

"I can protect you from your troubles and pain. Never forget, my love."

She would protect him and he would protect her – she would love him and they could build a new reality, together. He would ride on the horse and save her from crumbling.

He would love her.

"Never forget when you came into my life."

What a silly command. Her presence was something he wouldn't dream of forgetting. Her presence was something nightmares were born from.

And – who could save him when he was the last one standing?

He rasped in a breath and his eyes weren't constricted. Not anymore. But just because he woke up didn't mean she would regress into a dream.

"My love, you should never be afraid."

She had stopped behind him, whispering down his neck by the cup of his ear. Her hand found its way to fingering through his hair, and perhaps could be compensation for the way he had fingered her, once, twice, three times. But, you know, that was all relative and subjunctive and crap.

And whoever said she hadn't fucked him right back?

He was still an unfortunate paraplegic, his neck had sparked into a desperate inferno from her sharp, sharp lips on his skin, but this was not why there was a heartbeat against his irises, and it was not why, when he blinked, there was rain.

"_I'm not_."

There was a hiss, and his back ached as it arched, the convulsions taking over. She screeched as he disintegrated into a heap, and she was gone. It was just like she left him before, and there was hatred in him that simmered the brightest red. And then all he could _see _was_ red._ A red hue in everything. In the people walking past, in the grass, in the sky, in the monsters, on the moon, inside the sun, in the air – _everywhere_.

He was all too aware that nothing would assure him that he would stop seeing it.

The ground caught his crumpled form in a merciless thud, and the impact broke his lungs. He couldn't fucking _breathe_. But. Still…when had he ever breathed freely, anyway? This was the right way of things. The villain always dropped.

He wasn't sure when he blacked out, but when he came to his senses, he really, really wished he hadn't.

Drool had dried on his lips, creating a chapped mess. Sand had formed dunes in his mouth, and the granules were biting his cheek in an awful manner. Compared to his sore jaw and thrumming headache, Ultimecia didn't sound like such a bad option.

He pushed himself up with shaky arms, turning over onto his back in a rigorous fashion. He faced the annoying white again, and he gave a loud grunt –

Or, he wanted to give a loud grunt. All that came out was the vibration of his clacking teeth. He felt something restricting him, and the air had an unusual, burdening weight against his body. Something had happened, and certainly, something was missing.

He came up to a sitting position – which was surprisingly hard without the help of stomach muscles – and he wanted to cry out.

Looking down, he should have been better equipped. Right smack dab in his line of sight, he found a gaping hole in his chest.

Okay. Now. This was just getting ridiculous. Being exactly like his stomach, he found it was exuding the extremely aggravating sensation of wanting oxygen.

Just oxygen. And some corndogs. Oh Hyne, _food._ Just thinking about those two things made him salivate, and this was driving him completely insane. More than he already was. And that in itself was a feat if there ever was one.

And – shouldn't he be dead already?

He rolled his eyes. He was gonna give up on that idea. He was missing a stomach and two lungs, and…

He looked down. Nope. His heart was still there. He admitted it looked disgusting. For one thing, he could see all the veins still attached to it, and it was beating its regular rhythm, obviously undaunted by the fact that its lung friends were MIA.

The constant trail of blood had ceased to alarm him. It actually made the scenery a bit more vibrant.

He rolled the balls of his shoulders, trying to release the tension build-up in his back. It was seemingly pointless, and it made him wince at the stinging it caused. He finally glanced down to see them, still split open and bruised a forest green.

Looking at them made them hurt more. He sneered.

His legs didn't seem to have their proper function back. He had given up on them close to the beginning, and even if they did work, he had nowhere else to go. Instead, he wanted to take a deep breath, and then faced the fence with a squint.

Third time's the charm, right?

He reached forward, hooking his fingers through.

The things were, of course, the same. Except the ones in regular time were laughing, talking jubilantly, and the Haste redundancies where muttering in dangerous, drizzling promises. They were secrets that, he found, he didn't want to listen to.

The only things in crystal clear focus were the ones in slow motion. They happened to be seven figures, all wandering in pairs... except one.

It was like a dusty trail he was walking, and the first checkpoint was…Chicken Wuss. Chicken Wuss and his damn contemptuous hot dogs. Seifer could smell them, they were so tantalizing. _Couldn't he just have one?_

But he figured temptation wasn't the point. And he wanted to say that he didn't give a fuck what the damn point was but – he couldn't talk.

Hah. _Funny._

So instead, Seifer peered closely. He stared at the man with the winding, black tattoo, watching his face twist up into a laugh. His eyes were gleaming at the girl sitting beside him – or maybe at the hotdog in his hand – and he looked blissful. He looked happy.

Seifer saw red.

But then he felt them. He felt the emotions. Anger, irritation, exasperation. They were directed toward Seifer, and now Zell _didn't_ look happy. Everything but. He was glaring at Seifer, and his eyes were guarded. He was self-conscious, insecure – and pounding his fist into his other hand.

He was the greatest. He was the greatest martial artist in the world, and don't ever forget that, Seifer.

Seifer waited for what didn't come, scrunching his eyelids together as tightly as he could muster, but the scene changed in front of him, and cracking an eye open showed him bright green curiosity.

He moaned inwardly. Ugh. Selphie. Annoying, loud, perky Selphie.

She was grinning and waving, as if he was a camcorder, blinking red, recording. She made a face and then laughed, reaching over to her side. Out of magic, Irvine appeared by her side, and his hat was swiped and placed on the halo of her flipped, gravity-defying hair.

He didn't seem to mind. He placed his arm around her, his hand in a possessive grip on her hip. But he seemed distracted by some blurred, off-screen side quest, and she was distracted by trains and Ragnaroks and fancy automobiles.

She always had dreams and Irvine always had women. Seifer figured that's why he felt so uncertain. So uncertain and misplaced. There was a growing void in the present.

But the void filled with desolation. In the distance, he saw a fire, and he saw what looked like Trabia. He looked back to watch Selphie cry, her knees biting through the snowy ground and her knuckles white on her weapon. She had never intimidated Seifer in any way, but the raging destruction of his body in her mind gave her something close to it.

Irvine fazed in next to her, and he prodded her into his arms. She curled there, grasping at his coat buttons, and he rubbed her arms. The rage turned into a pillow, and emotion spilled on the ice. It ripped through his core and he burned, and he gagged, and he blinked into their future.

Their hands were tangled in a casual fashion, and they were inside a train cart. Seifer didn't know where they were going, but he didn't need to. He didn't want to. They were smiling.

His vision changed, and it focused on a blond whip. It was alluring, the whip, and it turned out to be a piece of hair. It was mixing wildly with wind, and it matched the movements of Save the Queen in her hands.

Instructor Trepe.

Or, he smirked, _ex_-Instructor Trepe.

It was all his doing, wasn't it? Well, if he wasn't the whole reason, he was a healthy percentage. Seifer had taken a swelling of pride from that lovely idea. He dismantled the Ice Queen. He melted her; he broke her façade that she'd hidden behind, just a little. Who else could live up to such a task?

Who else could say they were the proverbial black sheep that was only just different enough to break the saviors down, for a small span of time?

He blinked, the photo shots of her a slideshow spinning right in front of his nose. They were poignant, tiny spurts against his side. _This is not a dream, you know._

She was grinning, with pigtails and a missing tooth. She was holding onto matron's dress and he felt warm, chocolate love.

It fazed into her gaining her license to teach – proud, excited, accomplished. They filled her thoughts to the brim, and he could almost, almost taste fulfillment.

Then he saw her, in front of a class. Her eyes were crystallized and pointed to his feet on top of the desk. He knew what was coming before he felt it. The disappointment, the faulty expectations she kept hoping for. The determination.

The anger didn't come until later. When they started to duel, it was the most prominent. After his quasi-betrayal, it ran deep. Her whip struck out to wrap around his neck in that photograph, but at the same time, one lashed through into his dimension. He could feel the barbed coil around his neck, squeezing and tightening relentlessly.

But this was so stupid. Of all the things…Didn't it know he already couldn't breathe?

And then it faded away, and it seemed that he had died. Black was all he could see, and he went to embrace it, but, alas, it still wasn't meant to be. Damn.

In the corner, there was a flicker. It reminded him something akin to hope, but the emotion behind it ran dull. Closer inspection showed there should have been nothing of the sort. It was the end party, the one that begins the new beginning. She was holding a champagne glass, and there was Selphie and Zell and Irvine, laughing around and joking. She was left outside the circle, gazing at the distance in a wistful sort of way.

He figured he knew what she was looking to, and he felt nothing but the wind from the balcony, and the kiss that might have been hers in a different lifetime. The regret, the dream.

The still of her future was what he was anticipating – she was always organized and chronological order seemed to _reek _of her – but it never showed. Instead, the view shifted to what she was watching, what she was wishing.

The photograph became a motion picture, and he was slowly walking toward the couple. The two people he hated the most.

It sickened him, how they matched. The scar, the girl, the crowned knighting. They had been juxtaposed at the opposite ends of the spectrum, but weren't they both apart of the same person?

Nobody _asked_ if he wanted to be a part of that guy. The shadow looming in the background was enough to make up for any of that kind of bullshit. But who cared what the villain thought? Obviously, villains were one-dimensional.

Well, damn.

Squall turned around then, and his eyes were storm clouds, like when they fought. His scar was bubbling into a frothy crimson, and he was bleeding beautiful contempt.

_Yeah, well, _join the club.

He moved forward, Lionhart swinging up and up, glinting gunshots and death, and Seifer's blood felt spiked with delicious vodka.

_Yes. Please. We've both been waiting for this too long, haven't we?_

The blade came down in a paint stroke and, _god damn it_. The scene changed.

They were little. They were rolling on the beach, fighting and punching with scrawny arms and shoulders. The tidal wave carried sharks of rivalry.

They were older. They were sitting in the same classroom, detention – of course – with Trepe crossing her arms. Tension, in the neck, arms, ass, wherever. It promised to always be there.

And then, there was Seifer, looking at himself in front of his Sorceress. He looked fake, confident, gone – completely.

He watched, and he felt the rush of concentrated abhorrence. It was stemming from the weapon, charging toward his body, and he knew, right then, that he and Squall could agree on one thing.

Seifer observed his body falling from the cracked infrastructure. His body scattered into pieces, like broken marble fragments. He had been a statue once. He didn't think he'd have the energy to rebuild it again.

What a damn shame.

He was getting the feeling that blacking out and waking up were part of the never-ending cycle of this place. His body felt like it was adapting all too well to the routine. A bad thing? Maybe. He still didn't want to grasp that _this was his life now._

But would this be so bad? Atonement forever… it fit his resume. It was better for otherworldly devices making him suffer than himself, in any case. Plus, it was better than trying to find a job and making teensy tiny gil.

He sat up and cracked his neck. He perceived an emptier feeling than before, and he didn't much care for glancing down and taking in more missing parts. It was kind of – depressing.

He let his arms rise in a sore stretch, blinking away lugubrious sleep, and was stopped in mid-air. His wrist caught, and pulled down in an untimely jerk. He swayed loosely and almost pitched forward.

He must have lost his balance organ. What the hell was wrong with his equilibrium?

He rolled his eyes, and looked at what stopped him. What he found coaxed out the need to shout. _Shit_. He wanted to crawl away, fast, before she woke up and observed the state he was in. She would disappear if he shut his eyes, and the vision would change, and it would be an absolutely different mirage. He was supposed to be alone.

She woke up in slow motion. She retained that photograph mentality in his mind, it seemed. And it _would _turn out that she would show up and make things harder than they already were.

_This is damn hilarious, Hyne._

She blinked, and her snowflake eyes were hazy. She moaned under her breath, and raised a hand to her head. It jerked back, like Seifer's just a moment ago, and she was caught off guard.

"What in the world – "

He kept watching as she took in the band on her wrist, and followed the line of the thin string that connected to his.

Her reaction was as comical as it could get. Her eyes widened, and her mouth evolved into a horror-stricken line. She tried to back up, and she failed at a crab-walk, landing on her ass and sand, but not seeming to care as much as he had.

He wanted to laugh at her, but the absence of lungs stopped him at a weird almost-wheeze noise. He rolled his eyes in frustration. He couldn't even enjoy himself.

"S-Seifer?"

_No_, he wanted to bite out. _I'm_ _the Galbadian Headmaster. Who the fuck do you _think _I am?_

"Hyne, what happened to you?"

She got over her macabre shock, and probably gained confidence at the fence that separated them. She knew he couldn't touch her, so she crawled, closing the distance between them. Her hand fisted through the lattice on the fencing, and she leaned forward. Her gaze was open and analyzing, a complete mix of disbelief and interest. It made his skin have the urge to disappear.

"Seifer, what _happened_?" Her voice stretched into frantic, and he figured her inner healer was just _dying _at his decaying state.

To answer her question, he exaggeratedly shrugged. _Well, first, I saw all the people I touched with my charming demeanor, and then I realized that given another chance, I would most likely finger fuck our mother again. Oh, and I saw you guys, and understand your emotions toward me and your lives. Want me to read you your fortune?_

"Just talk to me!" She shook the metal, her chilly eyes following all the rivulets of blood to the ground.

He scowled, pointing to the opening fissure underneath his neck. He opened his mouth in a tired gesture, and his other hand came up and acted like a chokehold on his throat.

Her face slowly, finally shone with realization. "Hyne, you can't talk, can you?"

_What a genius._

"What about your pulse? Do you have one?"

He rolled his eyes and placed two fingers under his jaw. Oh. Well. He looked down to the hole and noticed that all the veins and arteries were suspended in the cavity, some poking out in vibrant colors among his chest. Guess that explained why he felt so empty.

He glanced back up and gave another half-hearted shrug.

He watched her fall back. "Oh, shit."

Hey. Quistis Trepe cussing? What a thing to behold.

He figured he would keep it coming. He patted the area around his stomach, and he shadow-acted barfing. Then he gestured with his arms.

"Your stomach is gone?"

He grinned and nodded.

"Seifer, this is impossible."

He looked down again and noticed something strange. Was – was that - ?

Oh, Hyne. This was going too, too far.

The space between his legs was void. He was wholly, utterly, possibly forever.. sterile.

Take back what he said about his heart being gone._ Now_ he knew why he felt so empty.

It seemed she had gone into a dismal kind of silent state for a while. He watched her, how she collapsed against the fence, how she looked withdrawn.

He considered he couldn't blame her. If he had fallen here, unannounced, with the madman of the world on the other side – speaking if he wasn't actually the madman – he would be going bat shit. And it would be fucking annoying if said man wasn't talking or answering all the in-depth analysis questions.

What is this place? Why are you here? Why am I here? What –

She had persisted. She looked lost and vulnerable, but she covered it well. Not great, but well.

All he could give were shrugs.

His legs finally seemed to reorganize themselves. After what seemed like an eternity of hours – they really couldn't tell what time it would be, or how long minutes were – the prickly, ant-biting sensation left them, and he felt he could stand. He tried walking, and after a few disastrous attempts – where he could have sworn she was smiling evilly – he was able to face the challenge with a confident ease.

They had woken up, yet again for him and the first for her, to a different kind of wall. This time, there was a long, unobstructed space in the middle, and it turned out that whoever was in charge was giving them some sort of wiggle room. They were able to walk, not freely in any sense, but slightly, in either direction. The metal was sprouting wood splinters here and there in a messy fashion, and after accidentally getting a piece of it stuck deep under his fingernail, Seifer decided to not question it.

The other side still looked like Balamb Garden. He could see the Library every once in a while, a classroom, and a very haunting cafeteria every few hundred steps or so. He never knew what was on the other side for her. She never talked about it, and that just pestered his curiosity. But then again, he figured he wouldn't have a way to ask her. Stupid disappearing lungs.

It would have been a bit easier, perhaps, if they had been left with the sand at their disposal. They could have made words, symbols, some distorted little language to themselves, but it had been replaced with sterile tile, bleached a sickly white color and laden to be dirty. But Seifer concluded it got its wish, because he wasn't going to stop bleeding any time soon.

They would cease walking when he got too tired, when his limbs became too drained and out of energy. It was these times, unmistakably, where he felt the most exposed. It had always made him become defensive, like a wounded animal stuck in a cave of beasts. He was ugly and ornery, and it would be a very immature decision to talk to him in such a state.

So it was, and came to be, however, that these were the times Quistis attempted to make double-sided conversation. Sometimes long-winded, sometimes short little questions and observations that would more often than not, go unanswered.

These were the times Seifer hated unconditionally. And yes. Ha-ha. He couldn't do a thing.

"Have you ever thought about it, Seifer?"

They would sit with their backs against the now, all wooden barrier, creating an easier length with their infallible string. Seifer kept up the habit of gnawing at it constantly, but Quistis picked at it a few times and told him to quit. He was wasting time.

But time for _what_? He wanted to growl, bite into her stupidity with sarcasm, but his only rebuttal was to keep gnawing.

So…had he thought about it?

_What _else _was there to think about?_ He grimaced, and he reluctantly pulled once on the string. If he answered something, maybe she would finally impede.

"Then," she continued at his answer, "I wish I knew what your thoughts were."

_Why the hell.. _He rolled his eyes and yielded in trying to pull a question mark into the string.

Understanding, or not, she persisted. "It would make things clearer… Seifer, you know you won't let anybody help understand you. This place," he felt her wrist move in a fast gesture, "only proves how complex you are."

_What was this bullshit she was spewing_? He pulled twice.

"No? You don't think so?" She turned around and sat cross legged toward the open spaces of the lattice. Seifer stayed where he was.

"Everyone else does."

_By everyone else, I think you mean _you_._ He made a scoffing face and let the string keep dangling.

He heard her sigh, hearing her submit. She shifted and he knew she turned back around.

"Stop hiding, Seifer. What are you so afraid of?" It was muttered, but it was earsplitting.

She reminded him of that trophy, not so long ago. The question made his blood drip out faster and faster, and if he had a heart, it would be ricocheting everywhere.

_I'm _not _hiding. _

What made her become so bold all of a sudden? It must have been the fucking wall, or the string, or the combination of them all rolled up.

He scrambled to face her back, and the tattered edges of his chest constricted, the hole in his abdomen clenched. Since when did she think she was a certified psychiatrist? She didn't know him. Not anymore. He amended. Had she ever?

No. No she hadn't. Had she? Shit.

But he was not afraid. He saw red, and he was _exhausted_.

He was _not afraid_.

She faced him, mouth a little parted. She watched his eyes slit in anger, and saw his cheeks try to flush, a gasket overloading.

He jerked the string twice so hard, her wrist cracked on the wall. She inhaled sharply, pulling her hand away, holding it protectively. She glared at him, giving him a fearless tilt of her jaw. Her icicle eyes held more poise than he remembered, and she looked rebuilt. She reminded him of a statue.

"Touchy subject, Almasy?" She leaned in. "Watch out. I may think you're lying."

He blinked, scowling, wanting nothing more than Hyperion's weight in his hand. But he sat back, dizzy from the lack of oxygen and lack of blood flow. He was little more than a rag doll now, and what did it matter if she thought he was afraid of a boogeyman in his corner? She could not think less of him than she already did. He was used to those looks.

_At least my best friend isn't Shiva._

But he frowned. She_ had_ friends.

Oh, Hyne. He was losing to himself _too. _

He didn't know why they walked so much in one direction. It was an endless, white corridor, filled with so much blind light; he would sometimes forget he was going anywhere. But whenever he turned, saw the lengthy, abominable trail he left, it would hit him that, yes, they were travelling, aimlessly and out of reach.

But walking fixed things. Sitting too long made his legs twitch and his ass hurt. And, at least, he wasn't drowning in his own, makeshift pool.

He glanced down at the spaces inside him. The blood had dried in various places, patches by the holes, spots littering around the grey wife-beater he arrived wearing. His cargo pants weren't fairing any better, as there was the humiliation of his newly neutered self, but also a constant cascade, falling and falling and falling, falling, falling. It was a river of paint staining the same paths, eroding the different shades of green, earthy colors with bereavements. They felt like regrets and he felt like a walking time bomb.

He felt filthy, and he felt foul. He would have given anything for a shower, or water, and some warm food...maybe nothing solid yet. Soup. Yeah. Soup sounded great. Oh, and some air? Yeah, that would be great, too.

"Seifer?"

His immediate irritation at her voice disappeared as quickly as it came. It could twist into an attractive distraction, if he wanted.

He noticed her eyes straying to him for slow moments, leaving then returning in metronomic beats.

It was uncomfortably annoying, and Seifer bit his tongue with unnecessary force. It was absurd, but even though he couldn't talk, he felt the sensation that he would scream.

He would scream so loud.

"I – I've been thinking."

Oh great. Give Quistis Trepe thoughts and it will equal your destruction. He frowned.

"I've been thinking about a lot of things, but they all lead back to the same one. And Seifer," she stopped walking, and she turned to face him. The sudden movements made him stumble backward, and he cursed in his head.

He raised his eyes to meet her, and she looked stricken. She burned larger holes in him, and they were worse.

"Seifer," she fixed her posture. "Would you do it again?"

He had to avert her severe gaze, but the glare from his body held no passion for him either.

A few moments passed. And then a few more, and a few more, and perhaps it had been an eternity. All it took was a tug or two, a nod or a shake, for salvation – for redemption – but. But it was never enough.

He sluggishly moved to the side. He kept his head down, looking at the puddle and examining his reflection. It was ugly, and it was ornery. All crimson red.

His feet shook with anxious trepidation, and they briskly pushed him into a walk.

Quistis did not look at him much after that.

Blackouts turned into days, and days turned into blurry little time slots. Seifer didn't much care for the time, as he hadn't for the past year or so. But now, in the instance that he discerned this was fair to him, he knew it wasn't very fair for her.

It was so easy to lose track without slips of paper or pen; he thought about marking the lattice with his blood – it was usable ink wasn't it? – but the more he thought in that direction, the less he cared. If she wanted that, she would have asked. If she didn't care about the clock ticking, then he didn't care about tally marking. But he kept in mind that it was the twelfth blackout.

The string, after his rejected answer, had grown into long, metallic handcuffs. Had he had oxygen to push out, he would have cracked a crude joke. So instead, he smiled to himself.

Regardless of the change of connection, though, the change in atmosphere was rocking. It festered with tension, and it created a nauseas knot between his chest and stomach. It teemed with unbreakable shocks and rigidity in their backs, and Seifer wished, with infuriating madness, that he could yell at how stupid she was being.

But after that, a day or two of recouping and rethinking, twisting their wrists into butcher meat with the cuff, Quistis broke the silence.

It was – a strange change of pace.

"Have you ever thought about living?"

He was expecting a, "You didn't answer my question. SeeD protocol calls for blah, blah, blah…"

Or, "Have you made up your mind, yet?"

Or even, "I hate you."

But at this question, a glower conquered his face. His life had been a climax and credits. It was abruptly unsatisfactory. What else more could he say about it?

He countered with an eye roll.

"You mean you've never had a notion that you could rejoin humanity?"

He looked at her, glaring.

She counteracted with her most intimidating, icy instructor look.

Ugh. He didn't have the energy for this. He sought after a sigh.

_Okay. Fine. You win. Yes, I thought about it once. And then I ended up here. Happy?_

His answer elicited the first grin he had ever seen her direct to him. Then it was shielded away.

Several, careful moments passed before she said, "I think you should try."

The thing about the Instructor he never understood was the thing she exuded now. It was some sort of sympathy – either pity or compassion – and she showed it in strange moments. In detention years back (those were the rarest of occasions), in the classroom (when she wasn't being a bitch and telling him things he already knew)…_now_.

His response was tight lips and a shrug.

But he did hear a tinkering of bells, and it sounded like an open door.

Seifer noticed the cracks in the wood, once.

It looked musty, raw, and sawdust floated in the middle of the fragmented lighting. To call it strange was easy, but to call it beautiful was very difficult. He tried kicking it, ignoring Quistis' attempts to stop him from something fruitless.

It turned out she was – right. The wood was as sturdy and stable as it had been before. The exterior was just changing, perhaps shedding the exoskeleton that it didn't need any more.

And the next day, a one day inside so many million others, their eyes opened to the wooden lattice taking on a glassy sheen. It was terribly subtle at first, but it grew into it on its own. They could only watch in wonder, day by day, as it changed and transformed into a super cooled substance. It was indestructible, and though it still left space for them to move around and leave footprints, the clarity in which they saw one another was frightening.

He held his body posed to the side as much as he could. However worthless it was, he was itching hives of shame.

They both wouldn't have been able to answer when it started. Seifer had been becoming weaker and weaker as the time progressed, and their moments sitting were gradually becoming more frequent.

As it turned out, the silence was a wayward manifestation. It would come and go in inconsistent amounts, but it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would. Silence had always made him prickle, but when it wrapped around them so tightly, he'd never not felt the air around him less. When it was loose, Quistis had a way of surprising him.

It wasn't like the strained questions before, or the purposeless observations. They held their own weight.

And she would talk, in all kinds of ways. It was almost a revelation – he was so used to only hearing her strict Instructor voice, he never considered that she was…a girl. A robot, yes. An untouchable ass, well, what male hadn't thought that?

She could speak softly and in kind, passionately, angrily, just like anyone else. He had never seen her that way.

He learned about the dog she used to have, before she had been swept away with Matron. She told him how she was unreasonably upset about not being able to remember his name, even after all these years.

"It's Shiva's fault. I know it is."

He wanted to laugh at that.

She told him about her love affair with books. "All kinds. It didn't matter. If it had printed ink, I'd look at it." She pointed to her glasses then. "Cid gave me these for a gag gift. He told me they matched my personality." She shrugged. "I've never parted with them since."

When she got to the part about teaching, she hesitated. He tried his best to prod with the short handcuffs, translating a tug into a nudge. She looked at him then, paused, and finally decided.

She spoke of the excitement she had the first time walking through her own classroom doors and seeing her name printed at the top of it. Nothing could stop her, nothing could possibly destroy how immense it all was.

"Until you showed up." She admitted that she always dreaded the thought of teaching him. He felt proud, even though he already knew that. "I guess it was because I knew I could fail with you, and I had a fear of failing, back then."

She described her feelings, and let him know all the little things he would do that she somehow couldn't stand.

"Like how you'd tap your pen against your cheek or how you'd sometimes stare out the window while I lectured." She said that she never minded when he'd prop his feet up on the table. "I could reprimand you for doing that."

He had a suspicious feeling that she hadn't had the chance to tell people these things. If she had, she wouldn't look so...so weird. That glint in her eye made his skeptical. But this wouldn't be happening if he could talk. Maybe she was just utilizing his speech impediment.

She told him that Squall made him look worse than he was. She wasn't sure, but she saw it that way. Squall was so quiet. He was so noisy.

"You don't know how many times I just wanted to tell you to shut up," she laughed. He crooked a brow.

She went into the betrayal. "I wasn't surprised," she frowned. "You were always your own person."

She didn't look him in the eyes when she talked about the other things. But it came to be that she didn't tip-toe over the eggshells, and he was relieved for it.

"I think I hated you." She drew invisible lines on the floor. "It was mostly because of what you started to become. I knew you had it in you to stop, but you didn't have anybody with you like Rinoa did. That was the difference."

He couldn't help but question if that was really why. He had the urge to tell her no, to pull the cuff forward twice, but he wanted to agree with her. He wanted to agree so badly.

He thought back to the control he was under, the fog. If he had Raijin and Fujin there, could they have shaken him out of it? Maybe. But they had bailed, so perhaps they weren't the people he needed at the time. He betrayed their loyalty by turning psycho, so he could understand what happened.

There were too many ifs. If he had a family, if he had a better closure of friends, if, if, if. But the ifs were paths that hadn't been taken. They didn't mean anything to him now.

But her voice was the only thing that could break through the saturated silence, and they curled the ifs out of his mind. Soon, he found himself craving all the things she had to say.

She had a soul. Who knew? Well, he did know _that_. But it was a completely different experience seeing it up close.

"What do you see on my side?"

They were sitting across from each other, and before she had settled with her question, they hung onto the silence that was neither comfortable nor awkward.

Seifer had been inspecting just that. The other side. He was watching student cadets eating mystery meat that was taking on the disguise of greasy, delicious looking lasagna. But there was more than just the food, and Seifer knew he was long gone from starving. He wasn't hungry like he used to be.

He looked at her, and contemplated mouthing to her the word. But after a few squinted looks and eyebrow raises, he gave up.

He reached down with his finger and dipped it like a feather. He brought it up to the shiny glass canvas, and crafted the word, all red and clear, smudged.

"Garden? Balamb?"

He tweaked his lips.

"Do you know why?"

He glanced at his blood. He had had a long time to think about that question, as well as others. But he came to the only conclusion that sounded right, and he stuck with it.

He stared into her eyes, seeing the curiosity and the _Quistis_ that lurked there. He brought his finger up and wrote another word.

"Home – " her breath caught. It sounded wrong when she made it.

He gazed at her face as she blinked, breathing in a deep inhale, and struggling with the placement of her mask. She didn't need it anymore – not after they had talked, not after he knew her so well. It must have been her sanity that kept it.

She suddenly looked uncertain, and her blue eyes seemed redder now. It was funny, because it wasn't anger or fury.

"I guess," she staggered, "it's the only real home we've had, isn't it?"

He automatically thought _Matron_, but it was the only thing. He didn't want to think of her as a mother, and the instance now was a far cry from what it used to be. He gave her a slight nod.

"You can go there, you know," a sigh, a pause. "You can go back to Garden."

He felt the apprehension rise in him. He dipped again and wrote.

"Maybe…" she shook her head, and she smiled a tiny fraction. "Where's the confidence?"

_Gone. _

Her smile grew. "You're a lot different than you used to be."

He scoffed, looking to the side. Well, he couldn't talk. So, yeah. He was a lot different right now.

Then he had an aching curiosity – what about her?

"Me?" she blinked, looking at the crimson _You?_ She gnawed at her lip, seemingly bumpy and itchy and prickly. He had the urge to tell her how that would only _waste time_.

_Waste time for what?_

"I've been seeing a lot of things." She took off her glasses, wiping them on the SeeD outfitted skirt. "They've changed. I've had a hard time shaping out their meaning."

He knew she was stalling. She could be strikingly blunt when she wanted to, and that had gotten on his nerves. But her pauses and stumbles became much worse for wear, and he decided that he liked it better when she just _said_ the things that needed to be said.

"My assumption is that whatever is on the other side matches up with us, somehow," she spoke lightly, and she placed her palm across the waxy surface. Her eyes peered past him.

"And what I see now is my old classroom," she glanced to him, and he grappled with the idea that he'd been staring.

"You're in your old seat, Seifer. You're becoming a SeeD." She sat back, bunching her eyebrows together. Then she laughed.

"Of all the things to want to have," she shook her head. "I must be losing it."

He swallowed hard, and the spit landed with a _thump_. No.

_No, no, no. Everything but._

He woke up again, for the fiftieth, sixtieth, seventieth time, and he had a dream.

It wasn't like Selphie's dream, it wasn't like Irvine's wanting needs. It wasn't like Zell's or his hotdogs, and it wasn't like Squall's glory or Rinoa's love.

It wasn't like Quistis' wishes – but it was like her want.

And he realized, perhaps for the first time, why she came here.

He listened to it whisper on his eyelids and ruffle into the roots of his hair. It dried into his mind, like blood on white – a stain.

They were the same.

_Alone._

She woke up to the word. He had broken her, unfortunately not for the first time.

Quistis cried, and Seifer watched the tears crystallize.

She was hiding after all. And he found her.

…_maybe it was the other way around, but … _

That was all relative and subjunctive and…_crap._

"Seifer – " she gasped, once. "You're bleeding – "

He rolled his eyes. _Yes, thank you for noticing, but I've been constantly dripping out on the floor for about – _

" – it's stopped."

He took back his thought. He didn't see _that _one coming.

He stopped walking, and turned his head to the ground. Lying at most ten feet behind him, there were a few dying droplets that managed to squeeze out. The rest of the way was cool, white, and religiously clean.

He blinked a few times, placing a hand in the soft _squish _where his heart used to be. It felt dry and scabby, and the only residue that came off was dusty and old.

He looked down at it, and saw a little sprout of hoping flesh stitching up itself, retying muscle and discord. It was a strange sight to behold while he stood silent.

Quistis had her hand up to the glass, watching the slow motion healing of his body. She seemed to smile.

"It's happening. Seifer, it's ending!"

It was double-sided. He didn't know which way to take it; so instead, he reached out and pressed his palm to the glass. His hand covered hers inch by inch. It was so much larger, and it wasn't the first time he noticed the heavy contrast. He searched her eyes above the almost interlacing contact. He wondered if she saw something in his eyes, because her smile faded.

He found that it would make no difference.

She was gone the next day.

There was no wall holding him back anymore.

In his utter shock, Seifer kept coughing. It was an unremitting wheeze, a fraught clutch here and a desperate grasp there. It hurt, and it was hungry – in his lungs, his chest, his stomach, and most definitely, his crotch.

They needed something, and he couldn't stop until he got his fill.

But his fill of _what_, exactly?

It led him astray. His vision started flirting with blurs, and when he was finally able to blink it away, he was looking down into the dark brown soil.

The thing was, it wasn't soil at all. It looked like burgundy liquor and smelled like havoc. It smelled dirty.

It smelled like him.

He dry heaved, wanting nothing else but to run away. There was a pressure in his back, like a knee or a body, and it took control over him. It wouldn't let him go.

It wouldn't let him go.

_Please. I'm so tired._

His face was getting closer to the stench, and he was pitching forward. He was going to fall, and this would be the last time. There would be no way out after he drowned in it again.

_A new reality, my love._

Closer and closer and closer…

His arms were giving out. His back smoldered.

"Where are you going?"

He gasped, blinking frantically. He took in metal and ticking gears and SeeD. Garden. Balamb.

"Quistis?" Ow. Talking hurt like a moaning whore.

"Not quite…" he heard a voice to the side of him, a shuffle of papers.

"Where – where is she?" Things started to come into focus. He noticed he was in a bed – a very springy mattress – and there was a white ceiling and white walls. Thankfully, there was no sand that he could see, _yet_, but there was a constant ringing that got louder and louder…

"I'd advise you to calm down, Mr. Almasy. Your blood pressure has been unpredictable these past few hours, and your pulse has been a troublesome thing to get used to…" he heard a concerned sigh. He felt blisters of irritation rising.

He pushed himself up, feeling a brief dizziness overtake him. He closed his eyes and shoved his palm into his temple. There was a warm tug on his shoulder, and he moved his head to see Dr. Kadowaki above him, looking slightly frustrated.

He didn't care. "Where the hell is Quistis? Is she okay?" The heart rate ringing became fast minutes passing by.

"She is healthy and teaching class, Mr. Almasy," she gave him a strange look. "Now if you wouldn't mind, please lie back down while I administer – "

He caught himself grin. She got it, she did it. But he almost laughed because, how could she not get it? Quistis Trepe was. Uhh. Quistis Trepe? Yeah.

But...wait. Teaching? That wasn't right.

" – you should be thankful, you know. Finding you so beaten to a pulp outside the Garden, rattling nonsense as if your life depended on it…" she was fixing syringes, her back facing him in a poor decision. "The things Cid goes through for you kids, I swear..."

He pulled the needle out of his arm and hopped off the bed, Dr. Kadowaki spinning back to see him sprinting to the doorway. "Seifer Almasy, we did not save your life just so you could die without the proper care – " and all Seifer knew was that she kept yelling and standing in the same place. If she wasn't going to chase him, nothing was going to stop him.

He hated needles anyway.

He ignored the eyefuls he got as he bolted through the hallways to room 29B. In fact, he didn't see the jaw drops or the disgusted faces.

It felt as if his life depended on this, and if he didn't act now, it would slip away. The clock was ticking this time, and it wouldn't wait for him. His chest raced and plummeted, beat boxing an adrenaline-lined rhythm, making him sweat because he was gaining on that room and he would be there very soon.

And then he _was_ there. He pummeled through the sliding door, and the whole room jumped and halted. Quistis Trepe looked solidly – unprepared.

"Seifer Almasy – " her eyes were bulbous and she spoke in a hushed whisper. But after her shock, she stood straight. "You're disrupting class. What a surprise."

He wanted to smirk at her sarcasm, but he strode forward with command, and he grasped her shoulders.

"Tell me you remember."

She was startled. "Remember? Yes. I remember you trying to kill me."

The class made an unbecoming "ooohhh" ing sound.

He shook his head. "No, not that. The walls and the visions." He searched pleadingly. "The dreams."

Her eyebrows frowned in dismay. She smacked his hands away and spoke to the class.

"If you will excuse me, students, I think I may have to attend the _psychiatric ward_ for an impromptu appointment. While I'm gone read section 7.21 in the SeeD Handbook and be ready for discussion questions when I come back."

She wrapped a firm hand around his bicep – he knew she took lessons from her own whip – and pulled him outside with a quick march. When the door closed, she looked like the splatters of murder.

"What a decent time to show your face, Almasy," she spat. "How did you even get in here?"

It would be so easy to fall back on the sarcasm. To get used to having a voice and breathing the beautiful amounts of air and _food_...But – but the time. It was a pressure against his arteries.

He furiously shook his head. "Quistis, it's not important. Just tell me, do you remember? I need to know."

"Remember what?" she hissed with an unflattering grimace.

"I already told you!" he shouted. "The fences, the glass, the handcuffs, the conversations, how I had three huge holes in me – remember?" he latched onto her shoulders again, and he trembled. "I don't have time for this."

"And I don't have time for_ this._" She gestured toward him wildly. "You barge in here and harass me with seemingly ludicrous questions – you! Of all people! Why are you _here_? I don't – " She jerked back in vain, his knuckles white against her dress suit.

The pulse in his chest flat lined. When he looked at her, he saw anger. Disappointment. All the things he never wanted to see in her, again.

He saw the shadows in the deep recesses of her eyes, and he saw his reflection inside.

"You_ don't_."

It could have been an extra dose of karma, but he found Quistis Trepe had accomplished what he used to always take pleasure in before.

She broke him.

She noticed the tear before he did, and he could only watch as her mouth parted in bewilderment.

Seifer Almasy _crying_. Could anyone imagine the day?

He shook, clattering together. Red. He saw red. She was the source of all the red.

But it diminished – it faded. The red was not anger any longer.

He knew, then, the hourglass had emptied. He looked at her and mustered a hideous smirk.

"I'm sorry. For –_ everything_."

His hands were still gripping her shoulders. He could feel her bones clamoring underneath his fingertips. Her body had forgiven him as much as her mind. So...not very.

This was it then, wasn't it?

He pulled her in and took her lips. It was brash, kind of like shit, and he was bruising her, and it wouldn't seal him up like he thought it might. But it would mean more to him than she'd ever know.

He broke off and relished the look on her face, before he had to turn around and before he had to leave. The thing he learned most about Quistis – she was the only one that needed his apology. She had friends, and they had a future full of love and wild abandon. They were moving on. They were happy. But they might not ever understand her like he did. And it was a bitch, being misunderstood all the time.

He remembered with distressing clarity that he didn't watch her future. It wasn't there. She was standing still. For whatever reason, she was the farthest one away from the circle of saviors. Perhaps she always had been, and he'd never taken to noticing. But, she really should have been in the middle of it. Happy and accomplished.

Maybe that was what she was trying to achieve. He just wasn't given the permission to see it unfold, like he wasn't able to see what lay on her side of the fence.

So, what if he was too late? His shadow could have been there, in what she wanted to happen, in what she saw. But people were fickle, and they changed their minds by the hour.

Seifer swallowed, his chest climbing with bile. He wished he could change his mind about her too.

.. Damn. He'd become soft. It must be the scar tissue.

But the little things that surrounded him didn't matter, but the question remained the same through everything besides.

Would she understand his acceptance?

_Well, shit if I know._

He hung onto the hope, anyway. There never was much else.

"Where are you going?"

He got to the middle of the hallway before she spoke. He tensed at first, then rolled his shoulders back and turned to her casually. He gave her a wide smile, ugly and ornery.

"You sure have a shitload of questions, don't you?" He rubbed a hand through his matted hair. He stared at the war on her face. "But…I think I'm bleeding."

Further inspection on his wife beater showed that yes, he was indeed bleeding. A red, lopsided outlining of a circle was forming on his chest, his abdomen…and, of course, his crotch. It was laughable, this time. Not because of the sight of them, but because he could _feel it_.

"Dr. K _was_ kinda mad that I bolted." He shrugged. "I guess whatever was in that IV was helping."

He started walking, ignoring the swift clacks of her boots behind him. She caught up with him in a few seconds' time, and he blamed it on the fact that he was too tired to run.

Her fingers burrowed into his shoulder, and it anchored him. "Where are you _going_, Seifer?"

Double-sided questions. He loathed them.

Still, he peeked over his shoulder to her scrutinizing expression.

"Dr. Kadowaki, Quistis." He perfected a crooked grin, scandalous. Almost deceiving. "I need to rev up if I'm going to take your class, you know."

That made her hand drop, white hot. She failed miserably at trying to keep a straight face.

"Don't look so excited," he rolled his eyes. Now - deceptive.

Without her anchor, he was able to keep walking.

But...

He ignored the exit sign. He went to the infirmary.

The queen of all questions came to him in a small hive of answers.

In that place, it gave him choices. She came, because she was one. She came, because she had a choice, too. She didn't remember because...Hyne liked to fuck with his mind. And hers, possibly. Whatever.

But if it was, in fact, his subconscious that created it, perhaps there was a little good inside him after all. If it wasn't...well, then it wasn't. He still held onto the hope that there was good, in any case.

He lazily, albeit a bit quieter, propped his feet on the desk, grabbed his pen and tapped it against his cheek. He watched the clouds pass by outside the window, free and careless.

He waited for it – and…

"Mr. Almasy, please refrain from dirtying the desks. Thank you."

He couldn't help himself. He smirked, basking in the red that took over Quistis' face.

"No problem, _Instructor_."

an#2; if you made it here, I love you.  
Mwahh~


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